BACKGROUND: A young Lithuanian woman rather than a nun approaching her 69th birthday was the killer's intended victim, Rita O'Reilly reportsBackground
Sister Philomena Lyons was not Kealen Herron's intended victim. He had set his sights on a young woman walking up the main street in Ballybay, Co Monaghan.
Gardaí believe Herron could have known this woman, a stranger to the town, a Lithuanian national who was working in the locality. Herron was standing on the main street, apparently waiting for a lift to work.
When he made up his mind to attack the young woman, he followed her out the Clones Road, in the direction of the convent of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. He was about 200 metres behind her.
It was a chilly December morning, and a man clearing frost from his windscreen got in Herron's way. He held back, afraid the man would notice him. By the time he could attempt to catch up, she was turning into the convent avenue, where she greeted Sister Philomena who was coming out with her suitcases. Herron fixed instead on the nun wearing her veil.
Herron drank several mixes of Blue Vodka and Red Bull the night before, along with other drinks. That morning, he had come from his girlfriend's home in Cootehill, Co Cavan. He had stayed the night there, where she lived with her parents.
His mother rang the house in Cootehill to discover her son had stayed the night and was late for work. His father drove over and collected him, dropping him on Main Street, Ballybay, where he was to get a lift to work. Herron went into a local shop, Quinn's, for a soft drink, and then went back in again for cigarettes. CCTV footage later placed him in the vicinity at the time of the murder.
Sister Philomena Lyons was "in jovial mood" that morning, her community said later. Just eight days short of her 69th birthday, she was light and frail, her spirit defying her frame.
As she waited outside the convent gates for the bus from Clones, she paced up and down, probably to keep warm. She had left her baggage by the pillar of the gate and it was from behind the pillar that Herron attacked her, grabbing her and dragging her up the avenue and into a field that was secluded by a hedge.
Herron later contradicted himself over what happened next. However, the deputy State pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy supported the view that Sr Philomena was unconscious at the time she was sexually assaulted.
There was no sign of a major struggle and investigators say it is probable the elderly woman went into shock straight away and was certainly unconscious when strangled.
Herron choked the nun with her own scarf. He then escaped through the fields and around the back of houses until he reached the Castleblayney road and thumbed a lift in the direction of work.
But Herron did not go to work that day. Instead, he turned back and got a series of lifts home, where he slept, and that evening met his girlfriend and carried on as normal.
Informed Garda sources say Sister Philomena never taught Herron, nor had he any known reason to seek to attack either her or the other young woman that day. A psychiatric report, commissioned shortly after he was brought through the courts, found him to be sane.
Det Insp (now Supt) Hugh Coll led a full-scale murder inquiry when Sister Philomena's body was found on the evening of December 15th.
Local CCTV footage was immediately seized and questionnaires were used in the hunt for the killer.
On Sunday morning, December 16th, Herron filled in a questionnaire and volunteered to give a fingerprint sample as one of the people sighted in the locality around the time of the murder. Discrepancies in his questionnaire raised suspicions, but it was not until the evening of December 18th that his fingerprints were identified on Sister Philomena's glasses. The following morning, at 6.15 a.m., gardaí went to his parent's home, six miles outside Ballybay, and arrested him.
Later, a DNA match was established between a sample of staining taken from the jeans he had been wearing and a sample of staining found on the nun's clothing.
More recently, evidence linking fibres on Herron's jeans with fibres found at the scene emerged from tests in the State's Forensic Science Laboratory.
Herron appeared subdued yesterday as he waited for the mandatory life sentence for murder that Mr Justice Carney imposed.
Sisterr Philomena, whose order's raison d'être is to bring God's "compassionate and saving love" to people everywhere, was in the wrong place at the wrong time when she met her death.
Or she was, in the words of one investigator, "a victim of her own purity".